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Category: Crops

**Let me go ahead and give full disclosure here. I am a former college intern of Monsanto. I am no longer employed by Monsanto. I am the wife of a farmer who uses biotechnology on the farm. I am an agriculture teacher who talks about the science of biotechnology every year at school. I have […]

Hello long lost readers! It’s been awhile! I apologize for the blog silence over the past few months but we’ve had quite a few changes around here! I guess you could say Jared and I have been going through an adjustment period. Here’s the latest: The (Produce) Farm: What’s New: Produce… lots and lots […]

A grain cart is a great tool for adding efficiency to harvest. A cart keeps a combine moving while spending more time harvesting and less time driving to and from trucks waiting at the edge of a field. Combines are expensive to operate so the less hours a farmer can put on his combine the […]

A lot has happened around the farm the last three weeks, and I feel duty-bound to get you folks caught up to speed. Instead of a long written narrative, though, I’ll let a few photos tell most of the story.

PUSH!!! PUSH!!! PUSH!!!

We have had A LOT of cows and heifers calve during November. A majority of their calves have been bulls, but that’ll get turned around sooner or later.

Thanks to all the “fresh” cows, our milking herd has climbed up to 207 cows. This is the first time we’ve eclipsed the 200 mark in well over a year.

The switch back to Standard Time means we have the opportunity to see the first light of morning and sunrise every day before we finish the morning milking.

A larger milking herd (and those cows increasing their production) means that we’re spending more time in the barn every day. My wife and kids have had to leave for school some mornings before I could get home for breakfast. But on the plus side, more cows = more milk = FULL MILK TANK!!!

Aside from the cows, I’ve planted quite a bit of wheat and ryegrass for them to graze next Spring…

A lot has happened around the farm the last three weeks, and I feel duty-bound to get you folks caught up to speed. Instead of a long written narrative, though, I’ll let a few photos tell most of the story.

PUSH!!! PUSH!!! PUSH!!!

We have had A LOT of cows and heifers calve during November. A majority of their calves have been bulls, but that’ll get turned around sooner or later.

Thanks to all the “fresh” cows, our milking herd has climbed up to 207 cows. This is the first time we’ve eclipsed the 200 mark in well over a year.

The switch back to Standard Time means we have the opportunity to see the first light of morning and sunrise every day before we finish the morning milking.

A larger milking herd (and those cows increasing their production) means that we’re spending more time in the barn every day. My wife and kids have had to leave for school some mornings before I could get home for breakfast. But on the plus side, more cows = more milk = FULL MILK TANK!!!

Aside from the cows, I’ve planted quite a bit of wheat and ryegrass for them to graze next Spring…

Our 2013 fall silage harvest is officially complete! We chopped roughly 1970 tons of corn and sorghum silage over 66 calendar days, filling all three of our pits to capacity in the process. It was the best yield we’ve had in years, and it’s good cow fo…

Our 2013 fall silage harvest is officially complete! We chopped roughly 1970 tons of corn and sorghum silage over 66 calendar days, filling all three of our pits to capacity in the process. It was the best yield we’ve had in years, and it’s good cow fo…

We weren’t able to get but five days of harvesting in the last couple of weeks, but we made pretty good progress the days we were in the field. We finished chopping all of the forage sorghum across the road from our dairy, with the final estimated yiel…

We weren’t able to get but five days of harvesting in the last couple of weeks, but we made pretty good progress the days we were in the field. We finished chopping all of the forage sorghum across the road from our dairy, with the final estimated yiel…

Another week of silage harvest is in the books, and a few more tons are in the pit. Wet, soft ground early in the week and equipment trouble on Wednesday limited us to only 12 hours of actual chopping time, but we were fairly efficient when we were run…